Play solitaire with less scanning of the layout, with less mouse movement, and fewer mouse clicks.
Waste less time playing unwinnable games.
Play new versions of many standard games including FreeCell, Solitaire, and Spider.
Play solitaire with large images of luxury cardsets some of whose face cards appear above.
All the above features can be found in the solitaire card game collection called Solitaire Games of Skill.
In part because of the judicious placing of the toolbar in Solitaire Games of Skill, the entire layout of all games is immediately visible to the player.
No scrolling is needed to see any of the cards at any time.
Some of the features of the Solitaire Games of Skill collection are discussed in more detail below.

PLAY SOLITAIRE WITH LESS SCANNING OF THE LAYOUT:

If a game is sufficiently challenging, every card which can be moved is marked with a light or dark blue strip.
This includes cards not at the top of their column. Often it is the case that light blue cards
can be built on foundations while dark blue cards can be built on the tableau.
This is beneficial for challenging games with complex layouts
such as Spider, Miss Milligan, Forty Thieves, Yukon, Scorpion, and Nestor.

Cards key to winning the game are marked with orange strips.
This would include cards that could be used to create spaces in the layout.

Potential trouble spots in the layout are marked with orange and blue strips.
Often building on such cards or not pairing such cards with other cards will cause the game to be lost.

Some players try to keep track of cards yet to be put into play using spreadsheet software.
But Solitaire Games of Skill provides a table listing of the cards yet to be put into play.

Finding cards in 2, 3, and 4 deck games for which all the cards are visible can be difficult.
Players can find the cards for which they are looking by marking them with yellow strips.

When playing Spider when a complete suit sequence is at the top of its column, the suit sequence can be removed.
Usually this requires the player to scan the layout after every play to see if any suits are complete.
The Solitaire Games of Skill version of Spider indicates when all the ranks of a suit are visible in a table listing.

More details on keeping track of cards and their moves along with trouble
spots are available on the Scan Less webpage.

PLAY SOLITAIRE WITH LESS MOUSE MOVEMENT AND FEWER MOUSE CLICKS:

Cards in a single column highlighted because they can be moved
as described above can be each sent to its own destination by a single mouse click on the column.

Left clicking cards will build the cards on the tableau.
Right clicking cards will build cards on the foundations or remove them from the game.

Cards can be dealt from the hand by left clicking anywhere on the layout there is not a card.
Cards can be built on foundations or turned faceup by right clicking anywhere on the layout there is not a card.

Players do not have to repeatedly cycle through the deck to get at cards when playing games
where cards are dealt three at a time to a wastepile and there are unlimited redeals.
Every third card is displayed to the player at once
in a column. Even with every third card displayed, rules of access to cards are the same as for when the player is
going through the deck by dealing three cards at a time. This easy card access saves a lot of
effort for games like Osmosis, Peek, and 3 card deal versions of Canfield and Solitaire.

Columns can be swapped by dragging one column over another and letting go.
This is advantageous in games like Spider and the game Streets and Alleys where it is helpful
to get sequences of cards of the same suit together. Column swapping cannot occur unless the
same result could be obtained by moving cards one at a time according to game rules.

Cards are sent automatically to the foundations without impairing any tableau building.
At the end of a game when the game is obviously won,
the player does not have to continue to make perfunctory moves to finish the game.
The game is finished for the player automatically even to the extent of building cards on the
tableau before sending the cards to the foundations.

Most solitaire software allows the player to make supermoves when playing FreeCell but not when playing
most other games involving moving cards singly. A supermove is a move that allows the player to
move sequences of cards based on the number of tableau spaces or vacant cells even though the game rules
state that the cards must be moved one card at a time. An augmented supermove which is found only in
Solitaire Games of Skill goes beyond supermoves by allowing you to move sequences to a column
while taking into account intermediate builds
on other columns as well as the number of
tableau spaces and cells. Augmented supermoves can be done in all games where
tableau building involves moving cards one at a time.
This includes games like Spider, Forty Thieves, Four Seasons, Baker's Dozen, Fortress, Flower Garden, Streets and Alleys,
Eight Off, and FreeCell.
Even for games like Baker's Dozen where tableau spaces are not filled
and there are no cells, the augmented supermove will allow the player to move more than one card at a time.
No augmented supermove can be made unless the same result can be obtained by moving cards one at a time
according to game rules.

You can move cards by clicking on the place where you want them to go rather than having to move the mouse to the card
and click on the card. Clicking on the desired location can result in an augmented supermove as described above.

Games can be played with up to 80% less mouse movement and mouse clicks.
More details on how you can play with less mouse movement and clicks are available on the Click Less webpage.

WASTE LESS TIME PLAYING UNWINNABLE GAMES:

Often the player will have to scan the layout for several minutes before discovering that a game is unwinnable.
Sometimes the player only discovers a game was never winnable after 10 or 20 minutes of moving cards.
Unwinnable games are thrown out for 48 games including Russian Solitaire, Pyramid, Scorpion, Streets and Alleys,
Fortress, and Flower Garden. With unwinnable games thrown out difficult to win games like Streets and Alleys, Fortress, and Flower Garden
can be won about half the time.
Also games can become unwinnable while they are being played even though there are lots of moves left.
This is true of Golf, Putt Putt, Nestor, Vertical, Peek, Aces Up, Cruel, and Queen of Italy.
For these games when the game is lost, play is automatically stopped so that the player does not unwittingly
continue to play a hopeless game.
More information on what unwinnable games are discarded or stopped during play is given on the Filter webpage.

PLAY NEW VERSIONS OF MANY STANDARD GAMES INCLUDING FREECELL, SOLITAIRE, AND SPIDER:

Free Kings is a version of FreeCell which has 3 of the 4 cells occupied by kings at the start of the game.

Little Klondike Cache is a version of Solitaire which allows the player to lay aside for immediate use up to 2 cards at a time instead of letting all the cards get buried
in the wastepile while dealing the cards one at a time. The game has no redeals.

Autumn Leaves is a hybrid 1 deck version of Spider and Scorpion which allows cards to be built on any card of a higher rank that has the same suit.
Thus the 7 of spades can be built on the 10 of spades as well as the 8 of spades.
All building is same suit building and cards cannot be removed from the game.

A pyramind like the one in the game Pyramid has been added to 7 games including Canfield,
Putt Putt, and Buffalo Bill. There are 16 Pyramid games in all.

One or more cells have been added to 25 games including Osmosis, Fortress, Aces Up, Gaps, Nestor, Golf, La Belle Lucie, and
Crescent. Adding cells can really ramp up the skill level of a game. La Belle Cell and Nestor's Room are two of my favorite games.

The players can choose the base foundation rank for 17 games just as is done in the game
Queen of Italy (Terrace). These games include versions of Klondike, Canfield, Forty Thieves, and Agnes Bernauer.
Super Klondike follows all the rules of the 3 card deal version of Klondike except the base foundation card
does not have to be an ace. Super Klondike has a win rate of around 40%.

To experience the above features, click on the left box below for a free Demo of the Solitaire Games of Skill Collection.
The Demo differs from the regular version of Solitaire Games of Skill in that it has only 30 ways to shuffle a deck of cards while the regular version has over four billion different shuffles.
However the Demo shuffles are from 601 to 630 using the Microsoft FreeCell game number system and therefore include the notorious FreeCell game number 617 (see Mike Keller's website).
Also after 30 days the Demo quits working.

You might also want to try the Solitaire Games of Skill Sampler. The Sampler consists of 20 solitaire games
taken from the 554 games of the Solitaire Games of Skill collection. Each game of the Sampler comes from a different major type of solitaire
and all of the games are original games not found elsewhere.
The Sampler has as many shuffles as the Solitaire Games of Skill Collection and does not expire in 30 days like the Demo.
More details on the Sampler are available on the Freebie page of this website.
If after playing the Demo and/or Sampler you find you want to purchase the product, click on the right box below.
If your operating system is Windows XP Home Edition or a version of Windows that is earlier than XP, these products require the .Net Framework 1.1 which
can be downloaded using the following link:
Download .Net Framework 1.1

Thirty Day Demo

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System Requirements

Windows 98 or later
Internet Explorer 5.01 or later
.Net Framework 1.1 for Windows XP
Home Edition or earlier